In this chapter we take a discourse analytic perspective and examine the Chinese institutional discourse of prenatal genetic counselling (henceforth, PGC) in Hong Kong. We focus on the interactions between Chinese healthcare providers and patients1 and examine how the notion of nondirectiveness,

which has historically been adopted as the guiding principle

in the genetic counselling profession, is challenged in this sociocultural context. Our interest in the Hong Kong context is twofold: first, the genetic counselling profession is still establishing itself in the region (Lam 2006); therefore the tenets guiding the profession are also being established and negotiated by the professionals. In addition, compared to other countries (e.g. the US and the UK), there are very few discourse and conversation analytic studies of genetic counselling in Hong Kong (Zayts and Kang 2009, 2010; Zayts and Schnurr 2011). This chapter contributes to this emerging body of research by examining Chinese interactional data.